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The Hill: Midterms confirm political stalemate

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

Although Republicans won a more sweeping victory than expected in yesterday’s midterm elections, the results tell us surprisingly little about what Americans expect of their political leaders.

Instead, the outcome confirms a new pattern of alternating partisan victories every two years, as Republicans dominate midterm elections and Democrats marshal superior electoral strength in presidential elections. The pressing political question today is how to break that pattern, which otherwise augurs deepening polarization and paralysis in Washington.

Exultant Republicans, of course, are hailing their sweep as a repudiation of President Obama. That’s true, up to a point. Midterm elections always are partly a barometer of public attitudes toward the sitting president, and there was no mistaking yesterday’s thumbs down verdict.

But if voters are dissatisfied with Obama’s performance, there’s little evidence they have fallen for Republicans or want the country to take a sharp right turn. On the contrary, exit polls found that voters disapprove of the Republican Party even more than Obama. Strikingly, 61 percent said they are dissatisfied or even angry with Republican leaders in Congress, even as they propelled GOP victories across the board.

Continue reading at The Hill.

How the Hidden Jobs Numbers Influenced the Election

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

Why were Democrats trounced so soundly? Many of the losers—including Mark Udall of Colorado, Mark Pryor of Arkansas, Michelle Nunn of Georgia, and Kay Hagan of North Carolina—were done in by state economies that are fundamentally a lot worse than the headline statistics show.

Consider Udall’s fate in Colorado, where the unemployment rate was only 4.7% in September, down from 8.5% only three years earlier, and not much above the 4% in 2007. Looks pretty healthy, right? The only problem is that Colorado’s labor force participation rate has plummeted by more than 5 percentage points since 2007, one of the biggest drops among the states. That means there are 220,000 Colorado residents who could be out looking for jobs, but aren’t, probably because they don’t like what they could get. Udall’s margin of defeat, as of this afternoon: roughly about 75,000 votes.

The same problem shows up in state after state. Mark Pryor faced an electorate where the labor force participation rate had dropped by almost 6 percentage points from 2007 to 2014, the largest decline of any state. That’s 135,000 Arkansas residents out of the workforce, who would have been there in 2007. Pryor’s margin of defeat is 143,000.

You get the picture. Here’s a list of the top worst states, ordered by decline in labor force participation rate since 2007.

  1. Arkansas -5.9
  2. New Mexico -5.6
  3. Georgia -5.6
  4. Alabama -5.5
  5. Tennessee -5.5
  6. Colorado -5.3
  7. Nevada -5
  8. Mississippi -4.9
  9. Washington -4.8
  10. North Carolina -4.7

The Hill: Why Red-State Democrats Matter

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

Washington’s political handicappers have spoken: Tonight will be a massacre—a Night of the Long Knives for red-state Democrats.

Let’s hope they are wrong, and not just for partisan reasons. It’s always a small but delectable victory for democracy when the voters humble the political seers and entrail-readers. We’re reminded that running for office is more art than science, and that the people really are in charge after all.

What’s more, a Republican Senate takeover would almost certainly harden the political stalemate that has brought the U.S. government to a screeching halt. It would purge states that voted for Mitt Romney in 2012 of high-profile Democrats, more perfectly aligning ideological and party allegiances across the widening chasm between red and blue America.

The problem is, while such ideological and partisan “cleansing” might be making our politics more homogenous from a philosophical and regional point of view, it is also making our country ungovernable.

Democrats would be doubly damaged by the lopping off of a major part of their pragmatic wing. They’d lose not only control of the Senate, but also political figures who know how to appeal to moderate and independent voters and thus help keep the party centered. Without such talented pragmatists as Mary Landrieu (La.), Kay Hagan (N.C.), Mark Begich (Alaska), Jeanne Shaheen (N.H.), and Mark Pryor (Ark.), and Mark Udall (Colo.), Democrats would be a more orthodox—and less interesting—party.

And, most galling of all, a GOP sweep tonight would reward conservative Obama-haters and put firebrands like Sens. Ted Cruz in the driver’s seat.

It’s a progressive nightmare, and Democrats are searching for explanations. The media is serving up a simple story-line: It’s all Obama’s fault.

That’s not entirely wrong. With his job approval scraping rock bottom (40 percent), the president has become something of a millstone around the necks of red- and purple-state Democrats. That’s why we’ve seen more of Bill and Hillary Clinton than Barack Obama on the hustings in the battleground states. Six years into his presidency, and despite a rebounding economy, 70 percent of the public believe the country is on the wrong track. Some key voter groups that swooned over Obama in 2008 have soured on his cool and disengaged approach to leadership.

So the president will have to take his lumps, but let’s not go overboard. Congressional Democrats are even less popular, and Republicans even less so. This suggests that deeper structural forces are also at work.

Continue reading at the Hill.

 

The FCC Chairman Steps Into The Abyss

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

Last Friday, Gautham Nagesh reported that the FCC  was inching closer to adopting a proposal put forward by Mozilla as its solution to the net neutrality problem. Under this “hybrid” approach, the FCC would reclassify the portion of a broadband provider’s network that interfaces with edge providers as a Title II service, while regulating the remaining portion that interfaces with end users as an information service.

The key line from Mr. Nagesh’s article reads as follows: “While the FCC still believes there should be room for such [priority] deals, its latest plan would shift the burden to the broadband providers to prove that the arrangements would be beneficial to consumers and equally available to any company that would like to participate.”

This leak portends good and bad news. First the good news: The FCC is coming to recognize that some paid priority deals could be beneficial for all parties, including end users. This recognition puts the lie to the “zero-sum hypothesis” peddled by net neutrality proponents—namely, that any priority arrangement must come at the expense of non-prioritized traffic. Hooey, say the network engineers; paid priority has existed in other portions of the network, and can be readily engineered to keep others whole.

And now the bad news: In a bow to political pressure, the FCC seems intent on establishing a presumption that any priority deal violates its rules unless the broadband provider can prove otherwise. Mr. Nagesh’s phrase “shift the burden” was a misnomer, as the FCC’s 2010 Open Internet order established the same presumption by declaring that any paid priority deals “would raise significant cause for concern” and were “unlikely [to] satisfy the no-reasonable-discrimination standard.”

Moreover, the D.C. Circuit ruled that such a presumption effectively barred such deals and was tantamount to common carriage: “If the Commission will likely bar broadband providers from charging edge providers for using their service, thus forcing them to sell this service to all who ask at a price of $0, we see no room at all for ‘individualized bargaining.’” We’ve tried this presumption before and it failed.

Critically, the D.C. Circuit laid out a legal path for the FCC to regulate pay-for-priority deals without resort to common carriage. So long as broadband providers were free to bargain individually with edge providers, the court explained, these arrangements could be regulated under the FCC’s 706 authority.

And how to establish such freedom? By flipping the presumption around, so that priority deals are reasonable until a complaining edge provider can prove otherwise. One can envision two types of complaints arising under this case-by-case framework: (1) an edge provider was denied a priority offering that was extended to its rival, or (2) an edge provider who declined priority from a broadband provider suffered a degradation in its quality of service. After demonstrating discrimination or degraded service, the burden should shift back to the broadband provider, thereby sparing the edge provider of significant legal expense.

Quarantined from political forces, smart lawyers at the FCC set about drafting rules that would thread this needle—again, without resort to Title II reclassification. The agency released a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (“NPRM”) a few months after the D.C. Circuit’s ruling, which explained that pay-for-priority deals would be subjected to a “commercial reasonable” standard, and “prohibited under that rule if they harm Internet openness.” In other words, such deals were presumed to be commercially reasonable unless an edge provider could prove otherwise. The NPRM also proposed to adopt a rebuttable presumption that a broadband provider’s exclusive pay-for-priority deal would be commercially unreasonable. From an economic perspective, those two strokes were utterly brilliant, as they efficiently placed the burden on the appropriate party.

Not so, said John Oliver and 3.7 million angry letters ostensibly submitted to the FCC. (Given the esoteric language of those letters, which invoked Title II authority, I suspect that a great many were form letters generated by public-interest groups clamoring for Title II-based solutions.) Ever since that political groundswell, the Chairman has backpedaled from the elegant, light-touch solution of the NPRM.

Indeed, key players at the FCC are trying their best to create the impression that every path to the finish line must be routed through Title II. Consider this October 27 FCC blog posting by three high-ranking FCC officials, explaining the remaining policy options on the table:

Panelists at the opening roundtable, which focused on tailoring policy to harms, debated paid prioritization—a topic central to many comments in our record.  Some parties have urged a flat ban on these practices. Others believe a presumption that paid prioritization violates the law would protect Internet openness. This is a central issue: how best can the Commission prevent harm to the virtuous circle of innovation, consumer demand, and broadband deployment, which unites the interests of consumers, edge providers, and other stakeholders?

Say what? How about that option that the FCC outlined in the NPRM, urged on by the D.C. Circuit, in which pay-for-priority deals were presumptively reasonable unless a complainant could prove that they “harm Internet openness.” By removing that critical option from the conversation, Title II seems all but inevitable.

Notwithstanding this sleight of hand, the Chairman still has two solutions on the table: A political-free solution embodied in the NPRM that draws from the FCC’s 706 authority and hugs closely to the D.C. Circuit’s decision, and a highly politicized solution drafted by a conflicted party—seeking to coordinate a price-fixing conspiracy for an input (priority) via regulation—that would reclassify a portion of a broadband providers’ network as a Title II service.

If the Chairman can’t figure out which solution is better for the dual task of protecting consumers and promoting broadband investment, then perhaps the two Republican commissioners should toss him a line by touting the virtues of the forgotten NPRM. Without it, he will fall deep into the abyss.

This piece is cross-posted from Forbes.

RealClearEducation: Cut College Costs: Make 3-Year Degrees the Norm

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

In an op-ed for RealClearEducation, PPI Senior Fellow Paul Weinstein argues that three-year college degree programs can slash the cost of gaining an undergraduate degree by 25 percent, unlike most higher-education reform ideas that simply expand financial aid and allow colleges to continue to raise prices at will.

“As I recently wrote in a report for the Progressive Policy Institute, the Three-Year Degree policy would require any college or university that has students who receive federal aid to make earning a bachelor’s degree in three years the norm. If combined with a proposal to simplify and streamline the alphabet soup of federal grant programs and tax incentives into a single grant (Simplified Higher Education Grant) worth $3,820, these two reforms could cut the financial burden for graduates by over $20,000 at public institutions (in-state) and by as much as $41,000 at private schools, with no new federal spending.”

Read the entire op-ed on RealClearEducation.

Press Release: PPI Releases Policy Memo Revealing FDA Regulations Struggling to Keep Up With the Digital Age

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

WASHINGTON—The amount of regulation on the pharmaceutical industry has increased 40 percent since 2000, according to a policy memo released today by the Progressive Policy Institute (PPI). Moreover, some new draft regulations proposed by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) this year fail to embrace data-driven innovation.

In FDA Regulation in the Data-Driven Economy, PPI Economist Diana Carew details new regulations proposed by the FDA designed for a slower, information-poor age. The memo concludes with policy recommendations for how the FDA can improve outcomes while still protecting consumers in a data-driven economy.

“In a data-driven economy, regulators should encourage greater information sharing, instead of pre-emptively regulating information in a way that controls and ultimately restricts it,” Carew writes. “Regulators should take the role of watchful guardians over data and information flows, taking action when there is evidence of harm or injury.”

“We hope that regulators within the FDA and across other regulatory agencies will be able to use this example as a guide for approaching future regulatory questions surrounding data. Embracing the data-driven economy is the best way to promote future prosperity and well-being for all Americans.”

The memo focuses on one draft FDA guidance in particular, issued in February 2014, entitled “Guidance 
for Industry: Distributing Scientific and
 Medical Publications on Unapproved New Uses— Recommended Practices,” which lays out a lengthy list of rules and restrictions for how drug and medical device manufacturers are allowed to communicate with healthcare professionals and “healthcare entities,” such as hospitals, on unapproved new uses. It discusses the draft guidance and explains why it is not adequate for the digital age. Finally, recommendations for the draft guidance are provided, and the memo concludes with an expansion of the discussion to how this case study can serve as an example for regulators struggling with rulemaking in this time of unprecedented economic transformation.

PPI has undertaken extensive research on regulation in the 21st century, aimed at guiding regulators and policymakers through this transition. Our work strives to strike the right balance between protecting consumers and encouraging innovation in an interconnected world.

Download FDA Regulation in the Data-Driven Economy

FDA Regulation in the Data-Driven Economy

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

The shift to data-driven growth is one of the most important forces behind the strong performance of the U.S. economy in recent years. Online sales are up by 16% over the past year, and Americans are getting more and more of their information online. Indeed, data-related products and services account for roughly 30% of real personal consumption growth since 2007, second only to the 40% coming from the growth of healthcare-related goods and services.

Yet regulators are struggling to keep up with the digital age. The accumulation of regulations designed for a slower, information-poor age fail to take advantage of new opportunities to improve outcomes while still protecting consumers. The issue of how to regulate in the data-driven economy has been widely discussed, including in several policy papers by the Progressive Policy Institute. For example, our proposal for a Regulatory Improvement Commission, designed to relieve the build-up of outdated and duplicative regulations over time, has been written into legislation and introduced in both the House and Senate.

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA), in particular, is facing a variety of regulatory issues which involve the intersection between the data-driven economy and the more traditional world of health-related regulations. For example, the FDA took a carefully balanced approach in its rule making on mobile medical applications, choosing to exercise enforcement discretion, instead of regulating apps that do not track medical information, such as counting calories.

Download “2014.10-Carew_FDA-Regulation-in-the-Data-Driven-Economy“

Is the CFPB Committing Regulatory Overreach?

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) is touted as one of the crowning achievements of the Dodd-Frank Act. But a new CFPB report on student loans is highly flawed, raising doubts about its regulatory reach over the private student-loan market.

The CFPB was created to bring all consumer financial products under one regulatory umbrella. It oversees everything in the financial sector that affects consumers — from credit cards, to mortgages, to auto and student loans. In its short history, the agency has responded so quickly and forcefully to allegations of consumer harm that few have questioned its expanding authority or overlapping jurisdiction with other federal regulators.

Last week, the CFPB issued its third annual report on student loan complaints. The agency first created a platform for student loan complaints in 2012, and embarked on a massive solicitation for general comment on private student loans in 2013. Shortly after, CFPB brought private non-bank loan servicers under its oversight authority.

At first glance, the report paints a picture of student borrowers victimized by unscrupulous private lenders and loan servicers. Complaints regarding loans and loan servicers are up 38 percent year over year, with many complaints indicating private lenders and servicers “provided no options [to modify repayment plans], leading the borrower to default.” Complaints against student loan giant Navient (formerly Sallie Mae) were up a staggering 48 percent, with the entire rise dubiously occurring in the month of December. An unwary reader could easily conclude that the private student-loan market is the heart of the student debt crisis, squeezing hardworking young college graduates of every dollar.

But a closer look reveals the report is fundamentally flawed. Although such a database is valuable for identifying concerns and promoting accountability, it should never be used as stand-alone justification for new regulation or policy. Yet that is exactly what this report does — it is basing policy recommendations simply on a compilation of unsubstantiated complaints.

Worse, the report is misleading in two big ways. First, the report makes the private student-loan market seem entirely to blame for the growing student debt crisis. And second, it offers no analytical evidence that private student lenders are unwilling to work with struggling borrowers.

Continue reading at The Hill.

Real Clear Policy: Restarting Nuclear Power

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

Director of PPI’s Energy Innovation Project, Derrick Freeman, penned an op-ed on today’s RealClearPolicy regarding the restarting of Japan’s nuclear reactors following the shutdown after an earthquake and tsunami led to meltdowns at the Fukushima Daiichi plant in March 2011 — with lessons for policymakers here in the U.S.

Nonetheless, there are compelling reasons for Japan to flick the “on” switch for nuclear energy. Since the mothballing of its reactors, the Japanese economy has been in decline, and the country’s utility sector has experienced tremendous losses each year. Nuclear power, once 30 percent of Japan’s electricity generation, has had to be replaced with other fuels, primarily fossil. Resource-poor Japan has been obliged to depend more on imported natural gas, coal, and oil to meet its electricity needs. This reliance comes at a very heavy price for both Japan and its citizens.

Read the op-ed in its entirety at RealClearPolicy.

PPI Weekly Update: Seizing the Political Center, U.S. LNG Exports, & Policy Choices Facing the FCC

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

PPI President Will Marshall penned an essay for last Friday’s cover of POLITICO Magazine, “How to Save the Democratic Party From Itself.” In his “moderate manifesto,” Marshall encourages Democrats to avoid following Republicans down the path of polarization and extremism, which will only deepen the political impasse, narrow their appeal to the moderate electorate, and risk future American economic decline. Instead, he argues, the Democratic Party should seize the political center and champion pro-growth policies that promote economic opportunity and reduce barriers to innovation.

“Democrats have been moving steadily to the left, about as fast but not nearly as far as Republicans have shifted rightwards,” Marshall writes. “If Democrats follow the GOP into the fever swamps of ideological purity, the nation’s political crisis will only grow deeper… Only by leading from the pragmatic center can Democrats capitalize on GOP extremism and rally broad public support behind new ideas for breaking the partisan log jam in Washington.”

Yesterday, Marshall wrote a blog post in reaction to the results of Wednesday’s ABC-Washington Post poll, which painted a grim outlook for the Democratic Party. The poll found the president’s job approval rating hovering at 40%, the lowest of his tenure, and the Democratic Party’s popularity at its weakest in 30 years, with more than half of Americans seeing the party unfavorably for the first time. “The poll’s big takeaway is the public’s profound antipathy toward the hyper-partisan and dogmatic approach to politics that has come to characterize what I’ve called the Polarized States of America,” Marshall writes. “The politics of polarization has been good for ideologues, uber-rich activists and narrowly focused pressure groups, but it’s been a colossal bust with the American people.”

This week, PPI released a new policy report, “Exporting U.S. Natural Gas: The Benefits Outweigh the Risks,” authored by Derrick Freeman, Director of PPI’s Energy Innovation Project. The report examines the LNG export debate and concludes with policy recommendations that strike a pragmatic balance between the needs of our economy and legitimate environmental concerns.

PPI Senior Fellow Hal Singer & Economist Diana Carew joined a Minority Media and Telecommunications Council (MMTC) net neutrality panel on Tuesday entitled, “Title II versus Section 706: Identifying the Regulatory Framework that Furthers the Goals of Broadband Adoption, Competition, and Deployment.” The panel discussed whether a more regulated Internet would foster the type of digital inclusion and engagement of broad communities, especially those that are underserved communities and small businesses. Attendees heard proposals for which regulatory framework is more likely to ensure universal broadband adoption and deployment, while fostering competition and innovation in a broadband-driven economy.

Research performed by PPI Chief Economic Strategist Michael Mandel to measure the ever-growing “App Economy,” both in the United States and abroad, has been highlighted in multiple different sources recently, including The Houston Chronicle, The HILL, The Courier-Mail, and ARN.

On Tuesday, October 28th, PPI will host an event, “Seizing the Mobile Moment: Policy Choices Facing the FCC and Why Consumers Should Pay Attention,” at the National Press Club. Please join us for a keynote and panel discussion on the challenges facing the FCC in the wireless ecosystem. Roger Sherman, Chief of the FCC’s Wireless Telecommunications Bureau will keynote the event. A roundtable discussion moderated by PPI Senior Fellow Hal Singer will immediately follow, featuring Michael Mandel of PPI, Peter Rysavy of Rysavy Research and the Wireless Technology Association, Roger Entner of ReconAnalytics, and Mary Brown of Cisco. The discussion will explore a variety of policy options that could affect America’s mobile experience for decades to come.

Marshall: Making America Work Again

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

As the midterm election draws near, Democrats and Republicans are locked in a race to the bottom of the public’s esteem. A majority of voters (51%) take an unfavorable view of Democrats – the party’s lowest rating since 1984, according to a new ABC News poll. Meanwhile, President Obama’s job approval has fallen to a nadir of 40%.

Republicans are even less popular, but their midterm prospects look better because their voters – older, white and married – seem more motivated to turn out on election day. The poll shows that likely voters give GOP the edge on key issues like the economy, immigration, the deficit and security. Since Republicans have done little to earn such confidence, it seems reasonable to conclude that the voters’ mood is more anti-incumbent – i.e., President Obama — than pro-GOP.

That’s usually the case six years into any President’s tenure, and the media has called the poll bad news for Obama and the Democrats.

No doubt, but what really stands out is growing public revulsion with the nation’s political leadership, regardless of party. Despite an improving economy, 71% of voters say the country is on the wrong track. And a whopping 83% are dissatisfied with the way the U.S. political system is working. Here again the Republicans get an undeserved pass, as likely midterm voters divide about equally when asked which party is more to blame for political deadlock.

In any case, the poll’s big takeaway is the public’s profound antipathy toward the hyper-partisan and dogmatic approach to politics that has come to characterize what I’ve called the Polarized States of America. The politics of polarization has been good for ideologues, uber-rich activists and narrowly focused pressure groups, but it’s been a colossal bust with the American people.

Republicans have led the charge toward ideological purity and extremism, but some Democrats seem anxious to follow suit. They want the party to embrace a polarizing populism centered on top-down redistribution, knee-jerk hostility to the private sector and class grievance. But matching the GOP’s right-wing populism with a left-wing populism is a dead end for Democrats. It would repel the moderate voters Democrats must have to build electoral majorities, and perpetuate the partisan stalemate in Washington.

As I argued recently in an essay for Politico Magazine, what today’s partisan holy warriors don’t understand is that the U.S. political system is biased toward pragmatism. By creating a government of separated and divided powers, the Constitution’s architects made it exceedingly difficult for one faction or party to dominate national politics. Unlike a parliamentary system, where the victorious side wins all the marbles and can enact its agenda, America’s political operating system is geared power-sharing and compromise. Our country is best governed from the pragmatic center, not the polar extremes.

For all their frustration with Washington, Americans ultimately are pragmatists — they want a government that works. The party that can make the most convincing case for restoring our political system’s ability to solve problems will have the upper hand going into 2016. And that’s why progressives should spend the next two years crafting a strategy for breaking the paralyzing grip of polarization and getting America moving forward again.

Exporting U.S. Natural Gas: The Benefits Outweigh the Risk

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

In a remarkably brief period, America has become awash in oil and natural gas. According to the U.S. Energy Information Agency (EIA) we have surpassed Russia as the world’s leading energy superpower, producing more oil and natural gas combined than any other country. This newfound abundance has turned old assumptions about U.S. energy scarcity and security on their head. For the first time since the energy crisis of the 1970s, there is mounting pressure—both domestically and abroad—for the United States to once again become a major energy exporter.

According to the EIA, America’s proved reserves of natural gas have increased in each of the last 15 years to a total of 308.4 trillion cubic feet (Tcf) in 2013, up 84% from 1999 estimates. The agency also estimates that unproved natural gas resources were at an increased level of 1,903.7 Tcf in 2009. These U.S. government estimates are in line with other assessments reported by several respected sources.

Most of these reserves are unconventional resources like coal bed methane, tight gas, and shale that have become more accessible due to significant advances in gas extraction technologies. As a result, the oil and gas industry, including expanding gas and oil production, have accounted for more than 9 million full- and part-time American jobs over the past few years.

The energy revolution also shows up in the results of the Progressive Policy Institute’s recently released 2014 U.S. Investment Heroes, an annual survey of the top 25 U.S. companies that invest most in the United States. On that list are 10 energy companies, involved in the exploration and production of oil and gas or energy distribution and power, that invested a total of $57 billion in 2013, representing 37% of the top 25 investment.

Download “2014.10-Freeman_Exporting-Natural-Gas“

Politico Magazine: How to Seize Back the Political Center

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

For all the roller coaster drama of the battle to control the Senate, the midterm elections won’t really change much. No matter which party ends up with a majority, Americans will still wake up on Nov. 5 to a seemingly immutable stalemate in Washington. But pragmatic progressives should take heart. Over the next two years they have an historic opportunity: to build a broad center-left majority that can break the paralyzing grip of polarization and get America moving forward again.

Not so long ago, U.S. politicians who robotically toed the party line were considered shameless hacks. And ideologues were seen as wingnuts—self-righteous cranks unable to cope with life’s complexities. Today, such people dominate our national politics. How are they doing? If the measure is simplifying and sharpening dueling political narratives, they are doing a fine job. If it is governing, they are failing miserably.

The more polarized our politics, it seems, the less productive our government. In this sense, polarization serves conservative rather than progressive ends. If you hate government, you probably don’t mind that Washington has degenerated into Fight Club. Conservatives come to fight liberal schemes to enlarge government; liberals come to fight conservative schemes to succor the rich and screw everyone else. And the fight is what matters, not getting things done, because the fight is how you raise money, energize supporters and get media attention. Compared with the give and take of governing, partisan combat is easy, because you never have to think independently, face inconvenient facts or accomplish anything more than keep the other side down. Plus, you get to pose as a paragon of deep conviction.

 In this Manichean hothouse, the battle lines are clear and everyone knows their place. To break ranks on any major issue is treason, to see merit in the other side’s point of view is heresy, to compromise is to sell out and to engage in political horse-trading is corrupt. Finding common ground? That’s so 20th century. Don’t bore us with intellectual honesty, nuance or shades of grey—just pick a side, slug it out and let the best team win.

Such are the new rules of political competition in the Polarized States of America. There’s just one hitch: They clash with the basic design of our democracy. Winner-take-all outcomes are better suited to parliamentary systems. When a party wins a parliamentary majority, it is expected to enact its platform unilaterally or with minor party partners. America’s political operating system is different: With three separate and distinct branches of government, our constitutional frame is rife with divided powers, checks and balances and constraints on majority rule.

Our system is intended, in other words, to thwart just what today’s polarizers dream of: imposing their philosophy in all its undiluted glory on the nation. The Founders, who really were wise in these matters, didn’t trust what they called political “factions” to wield that much power. “Great innovations,” warned Thomas Jefferson, “should not be forced on slender majorities.” Our political system isn’t supposed to produce ideological coherence; it’s geared to yield outcomes that balance competing values and interests, and in consequence are broadly accepted as fair and legitimate. Our system is built for pragmatists. And absent the pragmatist’s values—power-sharing, the willingness to compromise, regard for minority rights and some measure of comity between the branches and parties—our democracy doesn’t work very well.

The Affordable Care Act (ACA) is an exception that proves the rule. In 2010, Democrats resorted to an unusual legislative tactic, budget reconciliation, to pass the law without a single Republican vote. Since then the GOP has waged an obsessive campaign to demonize “Obamacare” as a naked partisan power grab—even though their mean-spirited refusal to offer a serious alternative for covering the uninsured forced the majority’s hand. So while the ACA is a landmark achievement, as a strictly partisan one it rests on a wobbly political foundation. Most voters say they oppose the law, and conservative legal challenges are working their way through the courts. Should they win a Senate majority this year, Republicans say they’ll exact payback by using reconciliation to kill or nullify the law.

The GOP’s implacable hatred of Obamacare also underscores an oft-noted fact about polarization: It is asymmetrical. Surveys confirm what impartial observers of U.S. politics can readily observe: Republicans are more ideologically extreme and more stridently partisan than Democrats. Conservatives also are significantly less interested than liberals in political compromise. Under the sway of a new breed of anti-government zealots, the GOP is chiefly responsible for blocking action on some of the most pressing issues we face, from tax and fiscal reform to immigration and climate change.

The Democrats aren’t blameless. Many liberals, for example, are just as theologically opposed to modernizing entitlements as conservatives are to raising taxes. The result of this demagogic stance is anything but progressive. It means Washington will continue to direct a growing share of the country’s resources to seniors while starving investment in children and families and future growth.

In any case, Democrats have been moving steadily to the left, about as fast but not nearly as far as Republicans have shifted rightwards. The share of Democrats holding consistently liberal views, for example, has quadrupled from 5 percent in 1994 to 23 percent today. This leftward movement is a big problem for the party. If Democrats follow the GOP into the fever swamps of ideological purity, the nation’s political crisis will only grow deeper. Absent a fundamental and highly improbable revamping of our constitutional system, America can’t be governed from either ideological pole. Only by leading from the pragmatic center can Democrats capitalize on GOP extremism and rally broad public support behind new ideas for breaking the partisan log jam in Washington.

Continue reading at Politico Magazine.

Washington Examiner: Think Tanks: College graduates struggle in current economy

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

In a collection of think tank reports on employment for recent college graduates, the Washington Examiner extensively quoted PPI Economist Diana G. Carew’s blog post “Surprising New Data on Young College Graduates.”

Diana Carew for the Progressive Policy Institute: Despite falling unemployment and a recovering labor market, young college graduates continue to struggle in today’s economy.

Analysis of new data reveals the real wages of young college graduates surprisingly fell in 2013, by 1.3 percent. The decline reverses a slight uptick in 2012, and continues along a 10-year trend in which real average earnings for young college graduates have fallen by a sizeable 12 percent since 2003.

Read the rest of the piece on Washington Examiner.

Economist: Silver Lining ‘How the digital revolution can help some of the workers it displaces’

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

The PPI was cited by The Economist in a special report discussing the digital revolution and the potential job opportunities it provides to the very artisans it originally displaced:

“The ‘app economy’ has since grown by leaps and bounds. According to an estimate by the Progressive Policy Institute, a think-tank, in 2013 it provided work for more than 750,000 people in America alone. Many more take part in it from elsewhere in the world, including employees at Rovio, the Finnish firm behind the wildly popular “Angry Birds” line of mobile games, and people like Dong Nguyen, a young programmer in Vietnam who scored an unlikely app hit with “Flappy Bird”, a simple but addictive game that was at one point earning him $50,000 a day.”

Dr. Michael Mandel, Chief Economic Strategist at PPI, was also quoted:

Michael Mandel, a technology expert at the Progressive Policy Institute, reckons that innovation is generally followed by growth in employment. That is most obviously true in ICT, but also in sectors like energy, where fracking technology has generated an oil boom and a jobs bonanza in states such as North Dakota and Texas. Mr Mandel invites sceptics to imagine a future in which doctors can 3D-print livers (and other organs) on demand—a technology that looks increasingly realistic. 

Read the whole story at The Economist.